A Man After His Own Heart
1 Samuel 13-14
Boy that Saul is a real hothead! I’m afraid I see a little bit of myself in his impatience. I want to get things done. I’m impatient with delay. I don’t like excuses. It’s not that I don’t accept excuses, I fully understand that things can slow us down; I’m just impatient with the delay which makes me impatient with the excuse or reason. When I’ve finally had enough of standing around doing nothing I become a bit of a bull in a china shop. In a huff I take charge and start giving orders. “If you won’t do then I will!” I knock those old excuses aside like so many flies; and if I think I’m about God’s work, well look out!
Do you think this can get me in trouble? It can. It has. It will. In today’s reading we see that such impatience has a pretty big consequence for Saul and his descendants. Saul became impatient waiting for Samuel to come and perform the sacrifice; the burnt offering and the peace offering. Having called the people together to go to war against the Philistines, and seeing them begin to disperse because Samuel is late in coming to make the sacrifice, he decides to take matters into his own hands and offer the sacrifice himself. Hey, he’s king right? He can do what he wants right? Nope.
Saul violated God’s law because he thought his position placed him above the law. Maybe he thought that since he was God’s anointed king, and he was attempting to show respect by making the sacrifice, that he wasn’t really breaking God’s law. I wonder if you and I do that sometimes. After all, we are children of the King and we are no longer under the law, so if we are a bit of a bull in the china shop for God it’s okay.
God is God and we are not. We don’t get to excuse our own bad behavior because we’ve convinced ourselves that we are “doing it for God”. When we speak out of self-centeredness instead of love we are not “doing it for God.” When we ram-rod our agenda through the body of Christ to satisfy our own self-centered desires instead of speaking and acting out of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not “doing it for God.” We are doing it for our little mini-me; our little Napoleon inside.
What are the consequences for Saul?
1 Samuel 13:13-14
“And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”
Notice that Samuel says “the Lord has sought out a man after His own heart”. Saul was taking on the world his way not God’s way. His heart was set on himself not God. The line of the kings of Israel will not continue through Saul. I suspect his faithful son Jonathan, would have made a very Godly king but, alas, the deeds of the father have doomed the son. David will be raised up and it is through his line that the salvation of all mankind will come in the form of Jesus Christ. As we will see, David will be consistently referred to as a man after God’s own heart. He will sin, and there will be consequences, but in leading the nation he will obey the Lord.
Brother is your heart set on yourself or are you a man after God’s own heart? If I had to pick one image to represent the entirety of the Bible I might select the heart, for while it would point to God’s incredible love, it would also point to the need for our hearts to be wholly given to Him. Where is your heart? Does it belong to you or does it belong to God? Remember that your children are watching. How they see you relate to God will have a major impact on how they relate to Him as well.
No one said it would be ease to be a man, but whether we like or not we all need to man up by surrendering our hearts to God and providing the example God intends us to be. In your own strength this is impossible but with God all things are possible!
Have a great day brothers!
Your brother and servant in Christ,
Bill
Dying to self, living to serve!
